2016-12-19

Overall I'm happy with my Philips GoGEAR Azure. I can release the storage space occupied by music on my phone - that used to be my portable Bluetooth player. I can also save some battery on my phone and it's a bit more handy to have a dedicated device that really fit in a small pocket.

Even if the player don't support AptX (my headphones does support it), the sound is still pretty good for travel and work. If I want true sound quality I can use regular wired phones.

Pros:

Good wireless sound (Bluetooth/A2DP)

Very good wired sound

Plays FLAC along with MP3

Good battery life even with Bluetooth, it served me days without recharge, they say "up to 35h for music"

It charges over regular Micro-USB port, like my phone

I can also browse music in folders, I hate players that only provide music grouped by artist, album

It has FM radio receiver with RDS

Cons:

does not support the Apt-X Bluetooth codec

it is almost double the size of my previous player (Phillips GoGear 2GB)

the reminder about volume limit is a bit annoying, even after I increased the limit

there are sound glitches when browsing folders while listening, especially when there are album pictures

2016-10-31

If we look at layers of matter organization, from elementary particles (electrons, protons or lower) up to Life, we found an interesting steady progress in complexity and a decrease in physical durability.

For example atoms are very hard to break. We can do fission on Uranium and other unstable atoms, but generally it requires a huge amount of energy to break an atom's nucleus structure. Even harder and rare is to break a neutron in his components, this happens only in very high energy nuclear reactions.

When we go up on the complexity scale, we have molecules that are pretty stable by our norms, however most of them are easily broke by chemical reactions. Some molecules are very stable, however most of them can relatively easily lose their structure by chemical reactions.

Complex molecules, like organic amino-acids are even more fragile. Enzymes could modify them. Even ultraviolet Sun rays could easily damage their structure. However, such molecules could have their information replicated in other molecules, like in genetic chains of RNA and DNA.

2016-07-26

"It's more moral for a doctor to kill a germ than to allow the germ to kill his patient. The germ wants to live. The patient wants to live. But the patient has moral precedence because he's at a higher level of evolution"

In "Lila, an Inquiry into Morals", Robert M. Pirsig brings intriguing reflections about the philosophy of moral using as pretext a river journey he had on a boat. Here I will bring my insights based on this book. Many of this reflections will be my own re-interpretations that were inspired by the book. Even my understanding on Pirsig's views might not fully correspond to the original author's intention.

2016-06-20

I have an advise, an opinion or a theory about almost any subject. Sometimes I can advise about things that I don't master very well myself. I didn't say it always works... Just challenge me ;)

In this page you can ask questions about any problem you might have, including personal matters - that can be discussed in public of course. I will attempt to answer to each one, the best I can. If the subject is very far from my experience or it is not interesting enough for the needed effort to answer, I might decline to answer. For the rest of it, I will give at least a short idea.

2016-05-29

There is a certain economical logic in companies
going bankrupt or being forced to do layoffs. When a company does not
provide enough value anymore to society, it should release some of the resources
(namely people and materials) for doing something more useful for society.

There are, of course, some pitfalls here.

When
someone that is fired cannot find another job, the actual value in
society is decreasing. Even premature retirement can have a similar loss
effect on society if that person was still creating some value and
after retirement he doesn't find something useful to do (like
volunteering, helping family).

2016-03-14

I'm not with those people that blames vaccines for baby autism and all the other health issues in a child. I think that there are many other things that might affect a child, including genetics and psychological issues.

Actually I found vaccines to be useful overall: I still see the effects of polio on people that were not vaccinated. I just wander if we really understand all the possible side effects of the way we are doing vaccination at this moment.

Wild question: is it possible that the vaccines increases the chance of developing various allergies? I'm not talking about the rare allergies immediately after the vaccine shot. I wander if, playing with the immune system, vaccines might also predispose to long time allergic reactions to various substances, like mites, pollen, peanut butter, eggs, etc.

2016-03-05

A virtual machine is a common example of simulation. It can take the
description of a (virtual) "computer" state and continue the execution
from that point on. You can simulate a huge computer given a computer
with more memory than the virtual machine, although it might be way
slower. However, such virtual machine does not answer the problem because it normally simulates a computer with less memory.

The question is, can a computer to simulate a virtual computer that
has the same capabilities as itself? Before answering this, let's exclude
some trivial (forbidden) cases of "simulations":

A calculator will always do exactly what it does, it will be
identical with itself, we will not call this a simulation of itself.

Copying the exact state of another identical computer in a "twin brother" will not be considered simulation.

Starting 2 identical computers with the same input will not be considered like one is simulating the other.

2016-01-21

We love "cutting edge" technology. We need to have the latest gadget, we need to use this new trendy framework, we need to use the latest update of our favorite software. Newer should be better, right?

Actually, each new technology brings a promise of improvement and an additional hidden small risk. You are trying the new innovative painkiller drug that promises to solve your low intensity, but still disturbing, migraines. You can get a real improvement on your condition, you could get no significant improvement or, with a small probability, you could die, like in the recent drug trial in France. Indeed, that was an experimental drug, and many others that took the drug were not affected. Well, this is exactly the danger: if the really bad effects only happens with low probability, it might not even be caught in the trial period...